then
bring your gold to America where bold entrepreneurs are making a killing. Have
you any notion, he would whisper in the ear of a French widow or a German
dowager, how property values in San Francisco shot to the moon during the Gold
Rush? Why, a little commercial front on Portsmouth Square with a bar slinging
shots of rotgut and a rouge-et-noir game in the back was bought for six
thousand dollars and sold but a few years later for one million. One million
dollars, madame. El Dorado House, the first restaurant in the city serving
hard-boiled eggs for five dollars apiece, leased its premises for twenty-five
thousand dollars a month.
This,
when men and women rolling cigars or shining shoes or stitching gentlemen’s
collars earned fifty cents a day.
Oh,
Father had them coming and going on both sides of the transaction. The dreaming
settlers, the idealistic famers, the ambitious shopkeepers scraping out their
survival in the cow towns, dead ends, tenderloins, and Chinatowns throughout
the West. And the scheming capitalists, the jaded merchant dynasties, the
indolent European royalty hungering for more profits, for greater cash flow.
The
eminent Jonathan D. Watkins became a mortgage broker and from 1888 to 1892
extended twelve million dollars, mostly in European capital, in loans on real
estate throughout the West. He put Daniel on H.M.S. May Queen on New
Year’s Day, bound for London and Paris. This was a time when Father favorably
regarded his son’s good looks, quick charm, and easy manners. Hobnob, those
were Father’s orders. Ingratiate yourself to those grieving French widows, diamond-studded
German dowagers, plump Dutch bluebloods.
Hobnob
Daniel did. So what if he wound up in Paris, drinking absinthe with whores and
poets at La Nouvelle-Athenes? He scratched up plenty of capital for Father’s
schemes. Removed from Father’s stern ambit, he found he cared little for
business, for money-grubbing. He kept his bohemian life to himself and dreamed
of pictures on a strip of painted paper whirling in a Zoetrope.
Then
the panic struck America in ’93. Banks failed, and capital dried up in a
financial drought the like of which no one had see in a decade. Businesses
collapsed. Angry gangs of unemployed men roamed towns and cities with sticks
and knives and guns. Needless to say, property values plummeted, especially in
the West where the economy was still so fragile.
By
1895, the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins found himself holding twelve million
dollars of his own outstanding debt, debtors who could not or would not make
payments, and property securing all that debt worth next to nothing.
What
could he do? Father declared bankruptcy and recalled his son from Europe. How
well Daniel remembered the telegram. What excitement to receive a telegram,
quite the rage. Brand-new telegraph wires looped all over the streets of Paris.
DANIEL STOP WE’RE
DONE STOP
COME HOME AT ONCE
STOP FATHER
MOTHER
NEEDS YOU STOP
Daniel
hadn’t understood the full import of the message till he reluctantly returned
home, dragging a bag filled with scandalously decadent paintings and four
bottles of Pernod Fils. We’re done? What in hell did that mean? That Father
had decided upon a new strategy? A more lucrative way to become a millionaire
besides lending the money of strangers to other strangers?
No.
Jonathan D. Watkins had become a failure, just as surely as the old cowboy or
the porter with his gold teeth. Bankruptcy was, to Daniel, as evil as moral
turpitude and as far-reaching as an extramarital indiscretion. Sins of the
father? Oh, yes. Daniel was doomed.
He
kneads his brow. Refreshment. Indeed, sir, refreshment is just the thing he
needs.
He
quickens his pace along the waterfront. Sailors stare at him, poke each other
in the ribs, guffaw, or mutter half-heard obscenities. Daniel tips his bowler,
keeping his spine ramrod straight. He’s got the accoutrements any gentlemen
should possess when sojourning through the West--a Remington
bring your gold to America where bold entrepreneurs are making a killing. Have
you any notion, he would whisper in the ear of a French widow or a German
dowager, how property values in San Francisco shot to the moon during the Gold
Rush? Why, a little commercial front on Portsmouth Square with a bar slinging
shots of rotgut and a rouge-et-noir game in the back was bought for six
thousand dollars and sold but a few years later for one million. One million
dollars, madame. El Dorado House, the first restaurant in the city serving
hard-boiled eggs for five dollars apiece, leased its premises for twenty-five
thousand dollars a month.
This,
when men and women rolling cigars or shining shoes or stitching gentlemen’s
collars earned fifty cents a day.
Oh,
Father had them coming and going on both sides of the transaction. The dreaming
settlers, the idealistic famers, the ambitious shopkeepers scraping out their
survival in the cow towns, dead ends, tenderloins, and Chinatowns throughout
the West. And the scheming capitalists, the jaded merchant dynasties, the
indolent European royalty hungering for more profits, for greater cash flow.
The
eminent Jonathan D. Watkins became a mortgage broker and from 1888 to 1892
extended twelve million dollars, mostly in European capital, in loans on real
estate throughout the West. He put Daniel on H.M.S. May Queen on New
Year’s Day, bound for London and Paris. This was a time when Father favorably
regarded his son’s good looks, quick charm, and easy manners. Hobnob, those
were Father’s orders. Ingratiate yourself to those grieving French widows, diamond-studded
German dowagers, plump Dutch bluebloods.
Hobnob
Daniel did. So what if he wound up in Paris, drinking absinthe with whores and
poets at La Nouvelle-Athenes? He scratched up plenty of capital for Father’s
schemes. Removed from Father’s stern ambit, he found he cared little for
business, for money-grubbing. He kept his bohemian life to himself and dreamed
of pictures on a strip of painted paper whirling in a Zoetrope.
Then
the panic struck America in ’93. Banks failed, and capital dried up in a
financial drought the like of which no one had see in a decade. Businesses
collapsed. Angry gangs of unemployed men roamed towns and cities with sticks
and knives and guns. Needless to say, property values plummeted, especially in
the West where the economy was still so fragile.
By
1895, the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins found himself holding twelve million
dollars of his own outstanding debt, debtors who could not or would not make
payments, and property securing all that debt worth next to nothing.
What
could he do? Father declared bankruptcy and recalled his son from Europe. How
well Daniel remembered the telegram. What excitement to receive a telegram,
quite the rage. Brand-new telegraph wires looped all over the streets of Paris.
DANIEL STOP WE’RE
DONE STOP
COME HOME AT ONCE
STOP FATHER
MOTHER
NEEDS YOU STOP
Daniel
hadn’t understood the full import of the message till he reluctantly returned
home, dragging a bag filled with scandalously decadent paintings and four
bottles of Pernod Fils. We’re done? What in hell did that mean? That Father
had decided upon a new strategy? A more lucrative way to become a millionaire
besides lending the money of strangers to other strangers?
No.
Jonathan D. Watkins had become a failure, just as surely as the old cowboy or
the porter with his gold teeth. Bankruptcy was, to Daniel, as evil as moral
turpitude and as far-reaching as an extramarital indiscretion. Sins of the
father? Oh, yes. Daniel was doomed.
He
kneads his brow. Refreshment. Indeed, sir, refreshment is just the thing he
needs.
He
quickens his pace along the waterfront. Sailors stare at him, poke each other
in the ribs, guffaw, or mutter half-heard obscenities. Daniel tips his bowler,
keeping his spine ramrod straight. He’s got the accoutrements any gentlemen
should possess when sojourning through the West--a Remington
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